Waterville joins ‘women of the world’ protest march
IT’S thought that more than 2,000,000 people took part in ‘Women’s Marches’ across the globe on Saturday - and this included 15 people in Waterville.
Susan Baughman grew up in Baltimore and spent 25 years in Austin, Texas, but she recently moved to Waterville after first meeting her husband in Killarney four years ago. Ms Baughman was one of the organisers behind Saturday’s march from the Charlie Chaplin statue through Waterville village.
The international marches didn’t impress everyone; some saw the protests as fruitless and their messages as vague, but Ms Baughman rejected such criticism.
“We got supportive messages from as far away as North Carolina, and the vast majority of feedback we got was positive.
“Women, children and men from Ireland, the US and the UK joined on Saturday, and I think we all just embraced the chance of having some voice” she added.
Ms Baughman said participants on Saturday had a wide variety of reasons for taking part.
“Some did it because they can’t stand Trump and don’t agree with his views on women. For others, it was a chance to speak out on behalf of millions of women worldwide who do not enjoy the same rights as men - it depended on the person.”
“For me, this was about women’s rights. More than 60,000,000 girls worldwide are not in school, and in some countries it’s still not socially acceptable for women to drive. I marched against inequalities like that on Saturday.”